


239

by popsongnation



Series: Urge To Kill [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-18 07:43:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3561725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popsongnation/pseuds/popsongnation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watching news broadcasts is different now. Scott looks out for tells, looks out for clues the FBI might pick up on. It’s been eight months and the PSAs about them have slowly vanished, but still they only go out at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	239

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in my drafts for ages, and it's finished, so I might as well post it. This is a time stamp for my Serial Killer AU [Don't know how and where to go](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1672706), best case scenario style. Feel free to disregard, as the original story stands well on its own. This just demanded to be written, and then demanded to be posted. You know how it is. 
> 
> **Warnings: No sex, but vaguely gore-y descriptions of murder and discussions of the world views to go with it. It's definitely gore-y-er than the first part. Take care.**

_**day 238** _

Watching news broadcasts is different now. Scott looks out for tells, looks out for clues the FBI might pick up on. It’s been eight months and the PSAs about them have slowly vanished, but still they only go out at night.

Scott would be at college now, preparing for midterms if he weren’t on the run. He’d be drinking coffee and falling asleep in the library, and texting Stiles– no, he wouldn’t be texting Stiles. Stiles would be dead. He forgets sometimes, that this didn’t happen only a few months ago. It was always happening. 

“I’ve _always_ been a dangerous sociopath, Scott,” Stiles had said, sarcastically, the only time Scott had brought it up, what their lives could be like right now. “This was _always_ going to happen. And you chose me, right? I gave you a choice?” Stiles himself might have meant to be guilt tripping, manipulating him into not leaving, but Scott _had_ had a choice. He could have left. He could have shot Stiles and never looked back. 

Only, that was never an option for him. His best friend had always been a dangerous sociopath, and that meant that there was no other life for him. This would always have happened. 

So now, they’re hiding out. Hiding out means only going out at night, avoiding cameras, wearing a hoodie or a baseball cap, or both, always. Hiding out means renting a rat infested one room apartment from a guy who’s probably in the mob and watching news broadcasts, to see if he can find out what Stiles has been doing, to see if anyone else could find out. 

Stiles is on an “errand” right now, which means groceries, and pickpocketing and maybe killing someone in a dark alley. 

They’re being careful, which means they are in New York, hiding in plain sight because New York has the most people. It means Stiles can only kill people who “won’t be missed.” It makes Scott sick, thinking they’re ranking people by societal value like that. It feels even wronger than it usually does. It used to be like running the world’s worst lottery, and now it’s more like perpetuating hate crime.

Stiles hates it too. He’s always twitchy now, dancing fingers and restless eyes. 

It also means that unless Stiles kills a prostitute, they don’t make any money. And they need money, for fake papers, for getting out of the country. Scott could have accessed his bank account, early on, but they couldn’t risk giving the police a clue about their location, and now it’s frozen. They couldn’t sell the car they stole either, just to be sure. 

The door creaks and Scott startles, but it’s just Stiles. He’s wet from the rain, leaving puddles everywhere, but its not like the floor could look any worse.

“How was work, darling?” Scott asks. 

“Wet.” He sneezes. “Ugh, I can’t afford to get a cold. I’ll die.”

“You’re not going to die, we’ll rob a Rite Aid or something.”

“I’d like to see you try to rob anything,” Stiles says, but he’s smiling. Talking about crime makes him smile, Scott has found. Scott talking about crime, especially. 

Stiles sits down on the bed next to Scott, falling backwards onto the mattress. His hair has grown long again, and he’s dripping on the sheets. “Any news?”

“Nothing suspicious.” Scott watches Stiles stretch languidly. “You killed someone today, didn’t you?” Scott has had to get used to using the word, tried to avoid it first, then cringed every time he did. Now it’s just a thing he says. Normal.

Stiles hums. “That obvious?”

“You’re in a better mood than when you left. The rain couldn’t have done it.”

Stiles turns his head, smiles up at him, like Scott being able to read him delights him. 

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asks.

They do that, sometimes. Not every time, but sometimes Scott will want to know. He doesn’t like secrets, doesn’t like Stiles keeping things to himself. And Stiles had kept this to himself for such a long time. 

When they escaped from the motel that night, after having gunned down a small police squad (“There probably weren’t more in the area. Good for us.”), Scott had sat in the passenger seat of the police car they took, stared out into the darkness, and started listing names. There were a lot of names, once he started thinking about it. 

“Just say yes or no,” he’d said. 

Stiles only said no once; old Mr. Johnson had really been killed by a mountain lion.

Scott had wanted to know everything after that. “I won’t leave you,” he’d said. “Just be honest.” 

And Stiles had been, frighteningly so.

Now, with trust restored between them, Scott doesn’t need to hear the details every time. 

“Do you want to?” he asks. 

Stiles tugs him down to lie next to him, so they are facing each other. 

“He was a tourist. People get mugged a lot, especially in that part of Brooklyn,” Stiles starts. “I made some money today, he carried two hundred bucks, so we’re not going to starve to death this month.” He smiles. 

“Well, that’s good,” Scott says, neutrally. He’d never admit to getting a kick out of this, but sometimes, if he wasn’t there, if he didn’t know them or see them, it’s exciting to hear Stiles talk about it. He feels guilty almost immediately after, which, he thinks, is how Stiles used to feel, too. 

“I stabbed him with your Swiss Army knife. In the stomach. Three times, I think?” He wrinkles his brow. “Maybe more? It was really satisfying, the squishy sound it made.” He looks at Scott cautiously, to gauge his reaction. 

Scott doesn’t know what his face looks like, but Stiles carries on, so it can’t have been bad. 

“I wanted to cut his throat, too, but he was already dead, and also, that’s a huge mess. Dark clothes help, but that much blood…” He trails off. 

The thing about Stiles is that he’s a junkie. If he doesn’t get his fix, he gets restless. Worse is what comes after the restlessness though, which is when he goes still, so very still, like a lion lying in wait. 

Stiles has never harmed Scott, but when he’s like that, Scott thinks he wants to. 

Stiles has told him about how it started, about the guilt, and the absence of it, and about his rational mind screaming at him. 

“I know it’s wrong,” he’d said. “I know that. But after a while it just becomes your life. You don’t think about the meat you eat as living creatures, not while you're eating it, and if you did the entire time after, you’d go insane,” he laughed. “Arguably, I probably am insane, though.”

And it is Scott’s life now too, so he says, “You’ll do that next time then.”

Stiles grins, like Scott gave him a present. “Yeah, I will.”

-

_**day 0** _

When the first cop comes through the door, Scott pulls the trigger. And he doesn’t stop pulling the trigger for the three that come after that, until Stiles is screaming at him to get moving, two guns in his hands and one in his hoodie pocket. 

After, Scott won’t know how they survived that night. He won’t remember anything besides his hands on the gun and Stiles’ infallible aim. 

He pushes Scott out of harm's way at least three times, once landing on top of him, turning around and shooting the cop above them in the throat. When Scott closes his eyes now, he can still feel the warm spray of blood on his face, in his eyes, his mouth.

Once no one is moving anymore, they walk to the parking lot, where five police cars are standing. Scott later remembers the wet squishing of his socks in his shoes, remembers the cold night air. He doesn’t remember thinking anything, but he says, “What about the woman at the reception?”

Stiles looks at him, wipes his bloodsmeared face with a hand that is still holding a gun. “She’s dead. I killed her while you were asleep.”

“You knew they were coming.” It isn’t a question. 

“My dad… the police… yeah, I knew it was tonight,” Stiles says. “I didn’t think I’d survive, but I just needed…” He trails off. 

“What now?” 

“You still got that Swiss Army knife I gave you for your birthday?” Stiles asks.

“I... yeah. It’s in my bag.” Scott doesn’’t know why he packed it, other than that it was Stiles' last gift to him.

“Good. I’ll get the bags, you wait here.” And he is off, back to the room, and that’s when Scott’s knees buckle and he is violently sick right there on the pavement.

It doesn’t stop for a long time. He vomits blood that isn’t his, the hotdogs they ate earlier, and the doughnuts they had for breakfast, he thinks, although it is impossible to know. In the end, he is just retching, dry, bile bitter in his mouth.

After a while, he realizes Stiles is rubbing his back, not saying anything, hand warm and gunless. 

Scott spits out once, then stands up. Licking his lips, he asks, “What do you need the knife for?” He isn’t afraid, not after this. He isn’t sure he’ll ever be afraid again.

“There’s a screwdriver on this. Multipurpose. I think ahead.”

They take off the license plates from all the cars. “That way, they won’t know which one we took immediately,” Stiles explains. 

“You’re a criminal genius,” Scott says, voice dead.

“I know,” Stiles answers seriously.

And then, unprompted, “I gave you that knife so you could defend yourself. From people like me.” He swallows. “I tried, right?”

And Scott hugs him, holding tight, breathing in his scent beneath the metallic smell of blood. 

-

_**day 238** _

Stiles gets cuddly after he’s killed. It’s not a sex thing, necessarily, he just wants someone to hold him. Wants Scott to hold him, in particular, and Scott is happy to oblige. 

He draws the covers up around them and pulls Stiles close. 

“Your hair is getting long again,” Scott says, brushing a hand through Stiles’ wet hair. 

Stiles hums. 

“You want me to cut it for you?”

“Tomorrow,” Stiles mumbles. 

“Okay,” Scott says, tugging his nose against Stiles’ neck and closing his eyes.

-

_**day 239** _

When Scott wakes up, early afternoon light is falling in through the cracks in the nailed-shut windows opposite the bed, sun spots dancing across Stiles’ face as he sleeps. Scott watches him silently for a few minutes, feeling all the twisty, irrevocably tangled emotions he manages to keep at bay, or at the very least separated, most of the time. 

Stiles sleeps peacefully now, deeply, feeling safe next to Scott for the first time since he left Beacon Hills over a year ago. He looks young in sleep, vulnerable and innocent, and Scott aches, for guilt and fear about Stiles’ future. There are only very few ways for this to go from here. 

Scott sighs and gets up, shaking off his gloomy thoughts. He turns on the coffee machine and goes into the bathroom, brushes his teeth and takes a very brief shower. The water is always at least mostly cold in this place, and the shower stall is moldy. Scott can’t say he’s used to it exactly, but it has stopped bothering him enough to put off showering until he feels as stinky as the apartment. He doesn’t want to imagine what it’ll be like once winter really hits and the temperature drops to truly freezing, he’ll cross that bridge when he has to. 

When he leaves the bathroom, Stiles is predictably awake (the smell of coffee will do that), the TV is turned on but muted, and he’s setting up a rat trap. No matter how many of the things they manage to kill, new ones are always appearing. Scott has stopped screaming (yeah, okay, he admits it) every time he sees one, but he still gets nervous hearing them rustle at night. 

He pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down next to Stiles. “News?” he asks. 

Stiles grimaces. “FOX is going over my childhood again. They’ve scared up a doctor underpaid enough to tell them about my bedwetting.” He sets the spring of the trap with a clang, knuckles white. “My dad should sue his ass,” he says, without looking at Scott, spearing a piece of cheese and setting the trap down on the floor, pushing it under the bed with his foot. 

Scott knows Stiles only wet his bed like three times when was eight, after his mother died. It had nothing to do with Stiles being psychologically predetermined to become a killer. Scott also knows Stiles’ dad wouldn’t win a lawsuit, not even if it wasn’t related to Stiles at all, if, say, someone sold him a broken car. He’s the cop who failed to notice his son killed thirty-two people directly under his nose. The whole country knows his face. If anyone sold him a broken car, it’d probably be a murder attempt.

Scott doesn’t know if they still live in Beacon Hills, his mom and the sheriff. The first couple of months, no day would go by without their faces on TV, mostly as they tried to squeeze past reporters camping outside their houses. He heard them refuse to comment so often, faces sunken and eyes dead, that it followed him into his dreams. But as time went by, the press either lost patience or their parents got a restraining order, or maybe they moved to Iceland. Scott doesn’t know, and he doesn’t like to think about it. 

He wonders what the last thing Stiles ever said to his father was. 

Instead of saying any of this, he asks, “Is Lydia Martin in that one?”

Stiles looks at him gratefully for not acknowledging Stiles mentioning his dad. “Of course.” He rolls his eyes. “She’s in everything ever filmed about me ever. She’ll make a career out of it, you’ll see.”

Scott smiles. “Good for her.” 

It’s a safe topic. For some reason, Stiles has a weird fascination with watching Lydia Martin cry about her late boyfriend on TV. Scott doesn’t think Stiles enjoys it as much as he thinks Stiles feels comforted by watching Lydia manipulate a whole nation for her gain, make something good out of a bad situation. 

Stiles has always liked her, and the only safe way for Stiles to like anyone, as he’s told Scott, is from a distance. Lydia is tragically famous, adored and admired, financially secure. Her reality is as far removed from Stiles’ as it can be. She is safe.

-

_**day 0** _

Without their phones, or maps of any kind, they have no choice but to stick to the highway. Stiles drives carefully, not even approaching the speed limit, and keeps his eyes trained on the road. They cleaned off most of the blood before leaving the motel, but still, if they get pulled over now, everything will be over. 

In the quiet of the car, Scott’s head is full and empty at the same time. He breathes deeply, focuses on the horizon where pale light is starting to creep up into the sky. 

“Who else?” he asks finally, not sure if this is the best time, but then again, it might be the only time. 

“What?”

“Who else did you,” he swallows, dry, “kill?” It comes out tiny, unsure. 

Stiles glances over at him, quickly. “Do you really want to know?”

Scott closes his eyes, exhaling. “Give me one name, let’s go from there.”

It’s Stiles’ time to exhale, then. “Okay. Remember Pumpkin Patch?”

“Our bunny?” 

Stiles mother had given him a rabbit in second grade, as incentive to stay out of trouble, she’d said. It had only been mildly effective. Pumpkin Patch had been Stiles’ pet, but they agreed almost immediately that they would raise him together. Joint custody. Scott had only learned the word that summer, when his parents got divorced. Pumpkin Patch ran away one day, out the door and towards freedom. Or so Scott had thought. 

“He didn’t run away.” Stiles says quietly. “It was the first time I– It was the first time I killed.”

Scott’s chest constricts, tears welling up in his eyes. It’s stupid, but he’d always imagined Pumpkin Patch was living out in the woods now, had his own little rabbit family. He understands why Stiles picked this as the first one to tell him about, to show him why he might not want to know. 

Scott doesn’t ask why, Stiles already said there is no reason. 

“You loved that thing,” he croaks. _I loved that thing_ , he doesn’t say.

“I did. Didn’t matter.” If that’s supposed to be a warning, Scott ignores it. Stiles has already proven that night that he wouldn’t kill Scott, and Scott has to trust in that. There is no way back now.

Scott decides right then, that he wants to know about all of them. He‘s all in. 

“Who else?” he asks, and Stiles looks over at him again, eyes pleading. 

“Just tell me. I’m not going to leave now,” he laughs somewhat hysterically, but sobers quickly. “I’m not going to leave you, ever,” he adds, seriously. “Just be honest from now on, please.”

Stiles is silent for a few long minutes, but Scott knows he is thinking, trying to decide what to confess to next, not shutting him out. 

“Who was the next one?” he prompts again, gently, when the silence drags on too long. 

“The video store guy. I didn’t even mean–” Stiles inhales, then speaks more quickly, like ripping a band aid off. “I didn’t even think about it. I was there and it was night. No one else around. And I thought, what if I give this shelf a little push? What would happen? I saw it in my head, so clearly and then I did it and–” He cuts off, but Scott gets the picture. 

He wants to ask, ‘Who next’, but he already knows. He knows.

“Jackson?”

Stiles is quiet, but he’s breathing fast. 

“Just say yes or no,” Scott says.

“Yes.”

-

_**day 239** _

They left the motel that night with four guns. They only kept one of them, the first one, Scott’s gun. It’s in their nightstand now, and they never touch it.

“If you change your mind, at any point, use this,” Stiles had said, eyes hard, when he put it there. “Don’t turn me over to the cops, kill me, do that for me, yeah?”

Scott had nodded, then, because it was the only acceptable reply. He didn’t say that he would never do it, not because Stiles wouldn’t believe him, but because this was important. Having a way out was important, even if he didn’t want it. 

Now, Scott is responsible. For every death that happens, after that night, Scott is responsible. He decided that Stiles’ life trumps all, he decided Stiles gets to live, gets to kill. These murders, now, are Scott’s. 

This way, with the gun in the nightstand, Scott not only made a decision once, he makes a decision every day. And Stiles sleeps peacefully at night, not waking, even if Scott tosses and turns. Stiles doesn’t feel guilty anymore. Because it doesn’t matter that he has no control over himself, because Scott’s got him. 

Scott thinks about this as he changes the bedsheets while Stiles does the dishes. The sheets are faintly pink where Stiles’ wet and bloody clothes dripped on them. 

“So, what’s on the agenda today?” he asks. 

“Well, we need to pay rent, we’re already a week overdue and I don’t want Marty to get suspicious of us. And then, I guess, groceries? I got caught up and didn’t bring any back yesterday, sorry. But it’s gonna be a while till it’s dark so? More TV?” Stiles answers from the sink. 

“Laundry,” Scott says, putting the sheets on the already sizeable laundry pile in the corner. 

Stiles groans. “I hate laundry. It’s a pain in the ass, and way too expensive.” He taps his foot as he dries off the coffee pot. 

Scott steps over to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry, we’re gonna get out of here.”

Stiles sighs. “Yeah. The only question is _when_.”

That’s the thing, about the money. They’re saving up to pay someone to smuggle them out of the country, by ship, because they don’t have any papers and airports are heavily monitored, and, “Anything could happen while we’re in the air for ten hours, Scott. By the time we land they’ll be greeting us with a firing squad.” 

They need money and connections for that, and so far they have neither. Not to mention they won’t know how much it will cost until someone makes them an offer. Laying low sucks.

“What’ve we got?”

Stiles gets the jar they keep all their money in, and they sit down on the bed to count it.

“659 dollars and 76 cents,” Stiles says. “Two hundred go to Marty, then there’s food and fucking laundry. So, four hundred, if we’re lucky.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I just want to get moving. Sitting still fucking drives me insane,” he says quietly. 

Scott understands that. Stiles has been running for so long, just waiting must feel like ants under his skin. But they’re safest here, right now. Nobody knows where they are, and nobody can track them. 

Scott can’t do anything else to ease Stiles’ discomfort, so he kisses him, and they end up making out on the bed for half an hour next to their pile of money (it really is a pile, one and five dollar bills making up most of it), until Stiles squeaks, fishes out a coin that’s been digging into his back and decides to put it back in the jar which he returns to its place under the sink.

He turns on the TV on the way back, and then they’ll get back to it. Being an outlaw is a pain in the ass sometimes, but mostly it’s just this: kissing and watching television with the person you’ve killed for.


End file.
